According to a report by W. Steven Barnett, although preschool programs are highly variable in their quality, there is good reason to support policies that make preschool available to young children, especially preschool programs that employ effective practices. The report, “Preschool Education and Its Lasting Effects: Research and Policy Implications,” was released today by the Education and the Public Interest Center (University of Colorado at Boulder) and the Education Policy Research Unit (Arizona State University).
Amid a contentious debate over the benefit of preschool programs, a new policy brief, Preschool Education and Its Lasting Effects: Research and Policy Implications examines what researchers currently know about the potential of those programs to bring about positive change. It finds that preschool can strongly benefit children’s learning and development. But the brief also finds that the quality of programs varies dramatically and that increased public investment in preschool education should be focused on program designs that have been demonstrated to be highly effective.
Link to a pdf of Preschool Education and Its Lasting Effects: Research and Policy Implications.
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Zig Engelmann, founder of DI, ran a very successful preschool before he got into K-6 education. The students were low SES students in Chicago. Apparently, he was able to raise their IQs significantly in the 2 years he ran the school. And he used the ideas he developed there to inform his instructional concepts.
Look at zigsite.com for some interesting documents pertaining to this.
Hey, Rocky. Thanks for the note.
I think the preschool to which you’re referring was the Bereiter-Engelmann program, and it was at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana. I have a graph showing some pretty impressive results from that study. I’ll post it later.
Thanks for the reminder.